Michigan's Best Doughnut: Crust of Fenton makes doughnuts 'about as close to perfection as you can get'

Mike Green, co-owner of Crust in Fenton, gets ready to cut into a peanut butter and jelly doughnut as part of MLive's search for Michigan's Best Doughnut. Scott Atkinson | MLive.com

FENTON, MI -- After trying one of Crust's signature doughnuts -- a peanut butter and jelly style -- MLive's John Gonzalez had only one thing to say.

"That's about as close to perfection as you can get," he said.

He was at Crust as part of MLive's search for Michigan's Best Doughnut, making his first of two stops in Genesee County. He was already about five doughnuts in when he tried the P&J style, a peanut butter-glazed doughnut filled with a house-made, four-berry jam.

Co-owner Mike Green was showing off the goods, taking them through the nutty doughnut, the maple glaze, the apple-filled.

All of them got nods or mouth-filled grunts of approval from Gonzalez, but there was another that was also a standout above the rest: the breakfast sandwich.

This doughnut takes Crust's maple glazed doughnut and turns it into a sandwich with apple wood-smoked bacon, Vermont cheddar cheese and scrambled egg.

"That's a great breakfast right there," he said.

Green said it fits in with their approach, as they like to start with traditional styles but then get creative. For Cinco de Mayo, they plan on making a margarita-style doughnut with tequila and salt involved.

"We like to get creative," he said.

After getting a tour of the Crust's bakery and tasting the doughnuts, Gonzalez said he was impressed.

"This place, it's not your old-fashioned, what you think of as a doughnut place," he said. "It's a little more artisan, a little more upper-crust."

He added he hopes that doesn't scare people off.

"I think sometimes whenever something is trendy or art or just pushing the boundaries of the norm, it turns some people off. I'm a meat-and-potato kind of guy and I think a lot of people in Michigan are ... but this place takes those qualities of a hardworking bakery that wants to make quality products with great ingredients and turns it upside down a little bit. This is a good place to come."

Next we're off to Donna's Donuts in Flint to taste more of Genesee County's best doughnuts and put them up against the rest of the state.